Alive
by That.Other.Boleyn.Girl
Summary: They're extraordinary because they've had two first meetings: one in London with a price on Eames' head, and one in Limbo, washed up on an unknown beach. Eames/Arthur, slash. Sequel to Alone.
1. Part I

**A/N: ****This is a sequel to **_**Alone **_**(on my Profile Page)****, so I would recommend taking a peek at that before embarking on this one (don't worry, it's not very long). I was aiming to keep this entire fic in Limbo but the lure of a backstory was simply too strong. Hence, this.**

**Please don't forget to review!**

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**Alive**

000

Part I

000

[before]

Cobb has his hands folded over his stomach, eyes closed, feet up, but still awake, because Arthur has learnt from all these years all the tiny things that reveal themselves on Cobb's face whenever he starts to dream.

"What do we do," is what Arthur finally says.

"I don't know."

Cobb has a bruise right across his throat, angry and purple like the weather outside, a fresh spider-trail left behind by Mal and an expertly wielded hunting knife. Arthur sighs and closes his eyes as well. The air vent is croaking because of the wind and Arthur thinks of that time in Amsterdam, crawling through the vents on his elbows and knees, Cobb in front and saying it's alright, we got a head start, they won't find us, don't panic, and Arthur saying I never panic, Cobb, but imagining the swift tear of bullets through his back.

"We can run." Arthur says this on instinct, always on instinct. "Lay low for a while. They can't look everywhere."

"We'll have to sleep sometime, Arthur."

"We can take it in turns."

"Not forever."

This is Cobb, Arthur thinks, he's always right, and Arthur can see the hotel lamplight right through the skin of his closed eyelids. "There's not much else we can do, you know."

"I know."

"We can always – "

"No," Cobb says, and that's the final word on it.

000

[after]

_Wet,_ is the first thing Arthur thinks, wet, and cold, and the taste of salt in his mouth like the time he fell over at the beach, aged four, spluttering under with sand whipping soundly against his legs.

This time he comes up with a gasp on the shore and his father's not there, nor his sister, in her small pink bathing costume inflating a beach ball there on the sand, and there's Eames instead, splayed out glorious and wrecked, arms spread wide like he's trying to make a sand angel. Arthur thinks Eames, tests the name gingerly in his mind, like he expects it to turn back on him and bite.

"Eames."

For a moment Arthur thinks that he's dead, he's not moving. And then Eames – is it Eames? – tips his head to the side and squints at him through the baking light.

"Hullo, love."

"Eames," Arthur says again, tongue forming the word. "Eames."

"Arthur."

And then the man Arthur believes is Eames blinks, like the word – the _name_ – has surprised him. Arthur pauses, sun striking hot on his nape, the waves crashing like skyscrapers coming down and Eames, whoever Eames is meant to be, with the salt crusting over his suit lapels and the skin on his lips cracked red and burnt, sits up in one long, sinuous movement and folds his arms across his knees, says I'm sorry, for a moment I thought I recognised you, and Arthur says don't worry, spine stiff like it always is with strangers, and says for some reason, I thought the same thing about you.

000

[before]

It starts with a job gone wrong, but not wrong in the usual way, not the safe that failed to open or empty documents inside, too many gunshots wounds and not enough time.

It starts with a job that goes backward, a mark who knows exactly what's happening, a Brit with gray eyes but not always gray, sometimes blue, sometimes green in another face, always seeming to be right on top of the game that they're playing, shifting network of parallel worlds. Cobb says Eames on that humid afternoon in Brunei, and Arthur looks up from his laptop screen with his right eyebrow cocked and Cobb knows exactly what he's going to say, says it for him, no, they don't know his last name.

The air conditioner is broken and the fans don't work, and Arthur has sweat sliding down his back when he says not a problem, how much do they pay.

"Enough," Cobb says, smile crooked and tight. "Enough."

"Enough for you to go home?"

Cobb's smile stutters shut and that's all there is, and Arthur doesn't ask again.

000

Eames, and Arthur writes it down on the whiteboard, him in the cramped hotel room they share with holes in the curtains that let in the light.

Eames, and Arthur is careful about it, surgical, every scrap of information sutured together, date of birth, height, weight, birth place, medical records and Eames had his tonsils removed at age ten, and Arthur dutifully prints that out, pins it up. Perhaps it will be useful somewhere.

Cobb comes back at eleven o'clock that night with takeaway, and Arthur doesn't stop to look up.

Eames, and Arthur immerses himself in the way that he always does, that he has to, every tiny thing with its own time and place, putting the puzzle pieces together until he can build a man floor-up from the facts. Cobb leans against the ratty sofa, his mouth full of cashew chicken and rice.

"Not bad," Cobb says and Arthur nods, doesn't show the glad smile that nudges his lips.

"He hasn't had training. This shouldn't be too hard."

"Have you checked that?"

"Five times."

"Good. Come on, take a break. Eat something."

Arthur does, puts the marker down, pulls back as if viewing a mounted Monet. His writing is skewered and hollow, perfect, and Cobb nudges the takeout carton at him.

"Got you lamb. Take a bite, then run me through what you've got so far."

Eames, Arthur says, orphaned at barely eight, father taking a corner in Bristol too quickly and into the path of a Royal Mail truck, with a grandmother in London now two years dead, small marble cross in Putney Vale. Siblings, Cobb asks, and Arthur says no, Cobb's shirtsleeves pushed all the way up to his elbows and the usual rings around his eyes, and Arthur says you should probably sleep, and Cobb shrugs it off and says go on. Eames, Arthur says, thirty-one and unmarried, working a pedestrian government job, apartment on the fringe of London with his spare key under a mat by the door.

"What are we looking for?" Arthur asks at two, hips braced against the sofa next to Cobb.

"Don't know."

Arthur shifts despite himself. "You don't know?"

"It's supposed to be a straight-forward job. He's not supposed to even know what extraction _is_."

There's a photo of Eames on the corner of the whiteboard, dark two-day stubble and high-bridged nose, strong jaw, edges fuzzy from bad quality photocopying.

"Mhm," Arthur says, and "If you say so," and doesn't think about how he was never_ supposed _to be shot in the meat of his shoulder in the days he'd worked for the Bureau, but it had happened, and here Arthur is, after all.

000

[after]

Eames sounds right, and Arthur does too. They don't try other names, because that seems to disturb the feel of the place, the wide space and the emptiness of the sky.

They are flawlessly polite, Eames in a slightly lilted way, gray eyes always clouded like he's trying to work out what's missing in all this. They walk up the beach and as the light changes the colour of Eames' eyes seems to change too, flicker blue, flicker green, and Arthur finds himself staring minutely, as if there's a key hidden in Eames' face, something that will offer up a clue.

"It's bloody strange," Eames says when they're standing on the rocky outcrop, foam roaring in the water below. "I almost think – I haven't met you before, have I?"

"I don't believe so, no."

"And yet, for some reason – "

Arthur smiles at him, brief drawing up of his lips, not real. "Almost like a dream, hmm?"

"Yes, I suppose."

Eames mirrors the smile, tensely, and then they're facing the water again and the breeze whispers through their jackets, through the hole in Arthur's shirt between his two collarbones that Arthur doesn't remember putting there, and the hole in Eames' jacket just above the small of his back. Eames sticks his hands in his trouser pockets and there's something familiar in that, Eames nudging a pebble down off the cliff, and they both watch it hit the shuddering water and disappear underneath it without a trace.

000

[before]

They catch Eames at a London club, a spiked drink and one of the locked back rooms, long-legged girl in ripped fishnets staring down with wide eyes at the five hundred pounds Cobb has spread out on the table.

"The other half's in a bank account in Dublin," Cobb says, naked light-bulb blinking overhead. "Do the job, and the full thousand's all yours."

The first level is easy, coffee shop somewhere in Berlin, Arthur with his cool-clipped German stepping his way past pedestrians and cars parked close to the street. Eames is sitting at an outside table with a paper, in French, spread out on his lap. There's late afternoon sun ruffling through his hair. He's relaxed, no cuff-links, top button of his shirt undone and Arthur sees the bob of his throat when he swallows, a cup of espresso in his left hand.

Arthur steps up to the side of the table and says, "I'm sorry, I made a reservation here."

"So did I."

This is unexpected, Eames with his face tilted up and smiling, just one side of his mouth quirked across and then up. Arthur blinks before he can stop himself.

"Excuse me?"

"I reserved this table yesterday."

"Are you certain?"

"Quite certain, yes," Eames says, and that's when Cobb appears by Arthur's side, a full half-hour too early, the lines around his eyes that says something's gone wrong and Arthur looks at him with his eyebrows raised.

Hans, Cobb says and Arthur knows what he means, says to Eames you're right, I'm sorry, I'm entirely mistaken, and they're in the next street underneath a concrete bridge with advertisements plastered over its sides when Cobb leans against the gunk and graffiti, sharp lines of his navy pinstriped suit, and Arthur stops right next to him and asks him what the matter is.

"Is it Mal?" is the first important thing, and for a moment, Cobb seems strangely surprised.

"No, it's – no. Not Mal."

Arthur looks over his shoulder on reflex. "Unexpected problems? You weren't supposed to come in until at least thirty minutes, Cobb, and – "

"He knows."

"Knows what? About us?"

"About _this_."

Arthur peeks over his shoulder again, old habit from the days before of running, before Cobb. "How can he? I thought you said he didn't even know what extraction was."

"He's a forger."

This stops things. Arthur feels his neck tense up, shoulder muscles going stiff, and a train rattles over the bridge and shakes the air like a cup of dice.

"Not possible," Arthur says, and for some reason, Cobb _smirks_. "I'm serious, Cobb. I triple-checked everything. Something as big as that wouldn't have escaped me."

"No?"

"No."

"You never make mistakes?"

That feels wrong, not something Cobb would say, and something deep in Arthur's chest is buzzing, that age-old soldier's sense. He takes a step back and hits the foot of the bridge, loses his balance for just the slightest of seconds, and then Cobb is right in front of him and pressing close, and Arthur thinks suddenly that Cobb's eyes aren't meant to be gray, they're blue, the blue of the Metro sign under which Arthur first met him, just out of the Bureau with his left shoulder lame.

"Everyone makes mistakes," Cobb says, and when Arthur next looks it's not Cobb, it's Eames, and before Arthur has processed this there's the sharp jab of a needle in his side and the world is spinning and turning gray, and the last thought Arthur remembers having is that the gray is the same shade as Eames' eyes.

000

"It's not there," is what Eames says.

Arthur's fingers stop at the waistband of his belt, behind his back where he keeps his Glock tucked close and Eames is right, it's not there, and his fingers meet air.

"I took the liberty of removing it," Eames says then, wicker chair tilted back on its hind legs, glass of scotch balanced in one hand. "Hope you don't mind."

Arthur thinks fuck, and the handcuff around his left wrist bites. "What have you done with him?"

"Nothing at all, sweetheart."

The endearment stings just in the way it's meant to, salt in a wound left gaping and raw and Arthur yanks at the handcuff again, pointlessly, the metal ring clamped around one leg of the four-poster bed Arthur had in his childhood, scuff on the headboard from where he dumped his school bag each day.

"What have you done."

"You don't believe me?" Eames says like it isn't obvious. "Why would I lie to you?"

"You're a forger."

"That is my profession, it makes no reflection on my character, love."

Arthur turns his head instead of being drawn into an aimless argument. "How do you know this place?"

"I know a lot of things."

"Like how to modify the appearance of your projections."

"Yes, certainly," and the amber of the scotch comes up to meet Eames' lips. "I am rather gifted in that capacity. A rather convenient defence against extraction, you see. Creating multiple versions of myself – makes it rather difficult to locate the _actual_ me, doesn't it?"

"Leaving you free to forge yourself as whomever you wish."

"That's the idea, yes. How very perceptive of you."

There's the Glock on Arthur's writing desk, a ruler's length from where Eames is currently sitting, and Arthur thinks too far, the bed's too far away, need something closer but Eames is thorough at least.

"Oh, don't dream of trying to get out, darling," Eames puts in then, smiling, furtive grin like he knows what Arthur is thinking. "Nothing sharp or loaded within a three-metre range of you. I'm not so careless. Unless you're willing to die by bashing your head in on the edge of the bed?"

"What do you want from me," Arthur says and hates him thoroughly.

"Nothing."

"I don't play games with this. What do you want."

From outside comes a screech of tires and Eames puts his free hand on Arthur's Glock. "Oh, Arthur. No imagination at all. Not everyone is after the same things as you are, you know."

"So you _are _after something."

"Everyone is after _something_, my dear, even if they don't know what it is."

When the bullets come singing in through the windows and tear chasms along the pile of Arthur's carpet Eames doesn't move, stays right where he is, does not even show the slightest edge of a flinch. Arthur says they'll kill you, relishing the words when he says them though he usually doesn't let emotion take a-hold of him and Eames just stretches his smile still wider, Glock cocked now with the safety off, says I know, that's why I'm here, Arthur, you see, and Arthur wants to spit at him, hates the way Eames drawls the syllables of his name, like they're something curious Eames wants to take apart and study.

"They'll kill you," Arthur says again, and Eames drains the rest of his scotch leisurely.

"No, they won't. Enjoy your extra two days, my dear."

And then Eames puts the Glock underneath his throat, soft hollow just between his two collarbones, and the sound of his finger pulling the trigger is mocking even in his own death.

000

[after]

"Berlin," Arthur says without thinking, the lights of the restaurant dim and muted and Eames across the table, wine glass poised in one hand, orange flecks on the tips of his dark blonde hair.

Eames looks up at him, eyes careful. "I beg your pardon?"

"Berlin," Arthur says, second time, losing surety. "I think I – something about Berlin."

"Never been to Berlin," Eames says amiably but his eyes have not lost that cautious tint, the one that they've had ever since the beach and the waves that drowned out everything. "I hear the architecture there is ghastly."

"No, you've been to Berlin."

"I'm sorry?"

"I remember seeing you in Berlin."

"But we've never met," Eames points out. "Perhaps you're mistaken. I've never been fond of the German language. Horrendous way to treat your verbs, I think, always placing them at the end of every damn sentence."

Arthur smiles at that like he's supposed to, though he can still see the slant of sun across Eames' shirt, the fringes of a newspaper in his hands, little frames of pictures that feel far away and yet close for some reason, like they were once treasured somehow. Arthur's hand finds his fork and he traces the metal, wondering what it is about all of this that feels trapped, buried crucially underneath something.

"I found a die in my pocket earlier," he says instead, and the fork clinks. "I don't remember anything about how it got there."

"Well, show it, then."

It's an ordinary thing, the kind in every high-end casino from Las Vegas down to Monaco, and the light sticks to the dots on it as Arthur puts it down by his plate.

"You have to roll it."

"Why?"

Eames blinks. "I just remember that it was important to roll it. I can't quite remember the reason why."

Arthur rolls it, a six, and they both stare at it.

"It's not three," Arthur says, although the moment it comes out it feels like a rather dumb thing to say.

"At least you'd win at craps with that," Eames says, and Arthur points out that you need two dice for craps and Eames smiles and says, well, it was worth a try.

000

[before]

Eames is right, it's two days, and Arthur wakes up on a hotel bed in Berlin with the sign of a needle-prick on the inside of his wrist.

Eames has left a handgun on the side of the bed and Arthur swears, grabs at it, points it at his temple and thinks to wake Cobb up, they still have Eames in the club room at London and there's no point trying again down here, they need a _plan_, a new one, and the handgun clicks and no bullet comes out to meet Arthur's skull.

Arthur swears again, loudly, and the note on the bedside table says sorry, dear, can't make it that easy for you.

000

[after]

They take separate rooms but in the same hotel, doors right next to each other because the world feels void of everything and they feel that they need to stick together, stay rooted, like if they don't all they know or don't know will be lost.

Arthur goes through the motions of brushing his teeth, unbuttoning his shirt in front of the mirror and seeing the bruise just under his throat, leaning closer, running his fingers over it. It's tender and it feels important. Arthur stares at it for almost five minutes, begging some place deep inside him to think, to remember, and when he doesn't he turns the tap off and smooths a hand across his wet hair.

The face in the mirror is definitely his and Arthur says to it me, this is definitely me, and that feels right and wrong on two different levels.

Eames appears at his door sometime later when Arthur is trying to nod off on his bed, gray eyes troubled and hair just noticeably tousled, still in his suit and slanted across the doorway.

"Fancy a drink?" Eames says. "For some reason, I can't sleep."

"I can't either," Arthur says to that, and gets up.

They take a Vodka Brut out of the mini-bar in Arthur's room and Arthur squints when it happens, déjà vu, and then Eames is passing a glass to him and saying to this place, and Arthur accepts it, says yes, and wonders why on earth they're toasting to it when they're not even sure what exactly it is.

000

**TBC**

000

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**A/N: So. Part II is written, Part III is not. Not sure if this fic is to anyone's taste; let me know, bbs, so I know whether or not to bother with Part III.**

**I know I made a few assumptions with Limbo - but, hell, the thing is so elusive that assumptions are hard to avoid, aren't they?**

**Please don't forget to review! Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it!**


	2. Part II

**A/N: Oops. Posted this up on my LiveJournal account a few days ago, and then promptly forgot to post it on here. My bad, guys. So sorry.**

**Please don't forget to review!**

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**Alive**

000

Part II

000

[before]

It takes Arthur three minutes to throw himself into the path of a car, the rough jolt like a kick from the base of his spine and then he's up, he's awake, he's in London again.

Cobb is still next to him, eyes closed, face smoothed over and flat. Still dreaming, then, Arthur thinks, and then he looks across and the place where Eames should be is empty and the girl in fishnets is nowhere to be seen.

"Bastard," Arthur says, and it feels good. "Bloody bastard."

He grabs the back of Cobb's chair and wrenches and then Cobb is jerking awake and gasping, eyes indignant and snapping up to Arthur's face, and Cobb gets out, "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

"He's a forger," Arthur says to him, then, "I'm sorry."

"He's what?"

"It didn't show up in the research. He probably already knew we'd check up on him."

"But we had him," Cobb says, and the light bulb above them is still blinking, Cobb's face sliding in and out of the light, eyes narrowed like they are whenever things start to collapse. "We had him, we went down to the second level and – you were there, we were three doors away from the vault and then you gave me the kick, two days early."

"That wasn't me down there."

"I saw you, it was – "

"He's a forger, Cobb," and that's when Cobb swears and stands up, reading between the lines, the job with no description of the mark and everything seeming just a little too easy, Eames taking the drink with a smile and no questions, eyes fixed on Arthur across the bar.

Cobb scrubs a hand up through his hair and Arthur gives him a moment, then says, "We should get out."

"Yeah. Cairo is sounding pretty good right now."

Cairo _is_ good, all blanketing heat and haze, the dust that makes its way through everything and Cobb keeps a Beretta in his jacket always, Arthur saying we should probably split up, and Cobb agreeing, but neither of them doing anything about it. They change motel rooms every second night, running from something and they don't know what, Cobb asking one night from his place on the couch why, what did he even get out of all this, and Arthur saying nothing at all to that, thinks of Eames with his long fingers tracing the Glock and saying everyone is after something, my dear.

000

No-one comes chasing after them.

This is surprising, Arthur so used to the zing of bullets over his head, the sudden shatter of glass and the pelting down alleyways, always running, the thud of his feet on the ground, his heart pounding tattoos into the underside of his ribs.

No-one comes and it's two weeks later when Cobb says I'm heading to Costa Rica, no explanation, just need to get out of here and Arthur says right, okay, not a problem at all. There's a bullet-sized bruise on Cobb's right bicep and Arthur thinks that Mal must be getting worse. Arthur sees him to the airport though, Cobb with a duffel holding all that he owns, and Cobb doesn't thank him but Arthur understands.

"Be careful," Arthur tells him at the departure lounge.

"You too."

They don't go beyond that, Cobb keeping his eyes always angled down, as if he's faintly ashamed of something.

Arthur nods and heads for the taxi rank and on the ride back to the cramped motel a dust storm blows in from somewhere in the West, turns everything dry and deep yellow-brown, and when Arthur looks out of the taxi window he can only see outlines and nothing distinct.

000

[after]

Darling slips in the next day, unintentionally, Eames passing him an apple over breakfast and saying here you are, darling, you know what they say.

Arthur doesn't notice until he's bitten into the apple, and then Eames says I'm sorry, I didn't mean that.

"Mean what?" Arthur says, after he's swallowed his bite.

"Darling. I didn't mean to call you darling just then."

"I don't mind."

"You don't?"

"No."

Something gives in Eames' smile. "Well, you said that, not me. I only hope you won't grow to regret giving your permission so readily once I start shamelessly abusing my privilege, _darling_."

"When have you _not_ shamelessly abused your privileges, Eames?" Arthur says, and then his throat clogs up. "No, wait, I didn't mean that, I don't know why I said – "

"I don't mind."

Arthur stares, and they finish their breakfast in silence, the snap of the apple beneath Arthur's teeth. When they're done they go out into the broad sunlight, bursts of white coming off the glass of faraway buildings and Arthur thinking of the glare of a lighthouse he once knew, warning of dangerous rocks ahead, and that night a lighthouse appears on one of the closest cliffs and Eames looks up at it from their edge of the beach, surprised, says I don't remember that being there yesterday.

000

[before]

Eames is waiting for him at the motel room.

Eames is waiting and the moment Arthur comes in Eames says, "Hullo, love," and Arthur's gun is out in an instant.

"Eames," Arthur says, tongue forming the word, the name, and flicks the safety off. "Eames."

"Arthur."

There's no nervousness in the line of Eames' back, silk shirt opened to two or three buttons down in the heat, gray eyes amused, too patient, like in the room Arthur had once lived in as a child with the bullets ripping through the windows and floor and Arthur still cuffed to his four-poster bed.

"You waited until Cobb was gone," Arthur says and Eames grins at him.

"Well, yes, naturally."

"Did you set up our job, with yourself as the mark?"

"Not entirely." Eames tips his head a little, then says pointedly, "What about something to drink, darling?"

Arthur cocks his handgun in response. "Unfortunately I don't keep liquor in these rooms, Mr Eames."

"No culture _and_ no imagination," Eames sighs and Arthur's finger is itching there on the trigger, one jerk too soon and that smile would be gone, wiped clean. "Always said the American education system was flawed. Well, it's a good thing then that I'm always well-prepared, isn't it?"

Arthur fires a shot at the floor in warning to that and Eames' hand pauses en route to his jacket pocket.

"Best be careful, love," and Eames suddenly has his eyes very steady, though he doesn't try the manoeuvre again.

"I'm always very careful. Hands where I can see them, if you please."

Eames obeys. "There's no need to be so hostile, sweetheart. There's nothing in my pocket but a bottle of Johnny Walker, and that's only dangerous if you drink the whole thing by yourself."

"I won't make the mistake of underestimating you again."

"The greatest compliment is to be underestimated, which is why I'm here with a proposal for you."

"I don't do business with people of your type."

"That explains why your clientele is so limited, then," Eames says, dart-smile spreading over his face, and Arthur exercises great self-restraint to prevent his finger from squeezing the trigger.

"The extent of my clientele has nothing to do with you."

"Your clientele wants both of us dead, Arthur dear, so I think it has _something_ to do with me."

Arthur shifts but his gun stays level and still and he says, "In that case, I'd be doing them a favour if I shot you. Perhaps it'll be enough for me to bargain with."

Eames makes a face that says well, you do have a point there.

"I suppose that might be enough to save _you_. It won't be enough to save Cobb though, you see, and he lands in San José in, what, ten hours? Such a pity. I was almost starting to like the man, even if his wife did try very hard to kill me in second level."

That hits something, a subtle twitch in Arthur's chest at Cobb, it won't be enough to save Cobb, and Arthur's eyes narrow over the barrel of the gun. "Explain."

"It's rather difficult to explain with a gun pointed at one's head, my dear."

"Very well," Arthur says, points the gun at his throat instead. "Better now?"

Eames laughs at that, the gray of his eyes lighting up in the dusty glow through the windowpanes, says, "Not really, sweetheart. But good try, nonetheless."

000

[after]

It can't be, Eames says when they're at the foot of the lighthouse, old-fashioned red-and-white stripes all across it, the paint seeming shiny and perfectly new. It can't be that we're the only ones here.

Arthur runs his hand across the concrete and thinks bridge, thinks train passing over it, and some spot on his side just above his left hip twinges slightly as if pricked by a needle-point.

"I haven't seen anyone here except you," Arthur says. "We just – it seems we just washed up here."

"But we must have washed up from somewhere, darling," Eames tells him, looking back over a shoulder, the tips of his shoes barely a metre away from the ledge.

"Perhaps there was an accident."

"You mean a plane crash, love?"

"I don't know what I mean."

Eames gives a soft little hum at that and tilts backwards on his heels. He's still wearing that jacket from weeks ago, hole in the back and in the shirt underneath, and when he moves Arthur can see the round bruise that peeks out from the silk and the pinstriped wool like a spill of purple ink. Arthur thinks that a bullet could have made that hole, though it couldn't have ever made that bruise. The strangeness of it tugs at him endlessly.

"You should get a new suit," Arthur says to Eames later, when they're standing together on the platform of the lighthouse and looking out and across the surging waves.

"Whatever for?"

"There's a hole in it. Haven't you noticed that yet?"

Eames hasn't and Arthur has to point it out, fingertips on the small of Eames' back and sliding up to ghost the rim of the bruise. The feel of Eames' skin is smooth and Arthur takes his hand away very quickly, starting as if he's just been burnt, and below them the water pounds down on the rock like a heartbeat.

"You're a hypocrite then," Eames says at last. "You've a hole in your shirt as well, my dear."

"I would mend it, if I had a sewing kit."

"Of all the things in this world that we do not have, Arthur, you want a blasted _sewing kit_."

"Well, I can't possibly wish for a tailor, can I?"

Eames looks at him and says, finally, "No, I suppose not."

But that night there's a suit on Eames' bed and a sewing kit on Arthur's bedside table, and they don't ask, don't question anything, put it down to the inexplicable way their world works. The morning comes and they sit on the platform again, lean their backs against the metal railing, and the holes are gone from both of their suits but the bruises still linger and don't seem to fade.

000

[before]

Eames has a tongue that's remarkably silver and Arthur can't remember why he put his gun down, Glock resting on its side at Arthur's elbow and Eames says we'll need a new layout, my dear, and Arthur says why did you double-cross them at all.

"I didn't double-cross them," Eames says to that, very smoothly, legs crossed and haphazard-looking in his chair. "I adapted to circumstances and could not complete my job."

"But you could've. You had Cobb alone on first level."

"I also had _you_ alone on first level."

"Yes, you did," Arthur says and doesn't understand what he hears.

Eames shrugs, says details, love, just details, and Arthur says I always read the fine print before I sign contracts, Eames shrugging again, casual roll of broad shoulders, says it's no contract and besides we don't have time for this now, just nine hours, bullet-holes patterning themselves into arrival halls and Cobb in an air vent in Amsterdam saying it's alright, don't panic on Arthur's first job.

"The only thing," Eames tells him, like it's a pearl of wisdom that Arthur doesn't bloody well know already, "we can do is find something they want more than our three buried corpses."

"Don't know what I'd want more than _your_ buried corpse," Arthur says, and he means it.

Eames' lips quirk a little.

"Yes, darling. You've made yourself clear on that front."

000

Eames is hiding something, and when Arthur says you know I don't trust you Eames grins with a look that says ten different things and yet means not a single one of them, tells Arthur well that makes two of us, love.

They go under to give themselves time to make plans and in the dream Eames is slippery, mercurial, like a fish Arthur's trying to catch with bare hands. Arthur spends the hours poring over a sketchbook and Eames stands in front of a mirror, and once Arthur looks up from his work and meets his own eyes from across the room, his own face, his own way of holding his jaw. Eames smiles at him and Arthur sees his own lips curve, and Eames has managed to even get _that_ flawlessly, the cool and collected way Arthur smiles because Arthur's been trained that way for so long, and Arthur snaps at him shortly, don't do that, cut it out, and Eames melts back to Eames with a certain glow in his eye that says that he's learnt something, says that he's won.

"You fascinate me, darling," Eames tells him eventually, four hours in and Arthur with the primitive layout done, just working out all of the finer details that Eames keeps insisting is unnecessary.

"Why? Are you unaccustomed to efficiency?"

"I'm unaccustomed to your degree of loyalty."

Arthur stops, ballpoint pen balanced perfectly in one hand. "I'm not surprised, considering my experience with you so far."

"Does Cobb reciprocate your unfaltering dedication to him, I wonder?"

"That has no relevance to the job at hand, Mr Eames."

"It has plenty of relevance." Eames shoves Arthur's papers to one side; Arthur glares and snatches his sketchbook back. "You don't know me, darling, you make it quite clear you don't like me, yet you trust – "

"I've already said, I don't trust you."

"And yet here you are, in a dream with me."

"I was in a dream with you last time as well," and Arthur pauses, then adds, "unfortunately."

"But this time you're willing."

"No, I'm not, if you really must know."

Eames takes the hint, drops the subject at once like it's scalded him. "Where's the safe, sweetheart? You're a terrible architect. You're so neat that I can't tell at all what you've drawn."

It's a lighthouse and Arthur doesn't bother telling him so, doesn't bother even when they're back in Cairo and doesn't bother even when they're at the very foot of it, concrete stripes and Eames tipping back on his heels with his face twisted up to see through all that sun, shadow stretching out lean like a pencil-jot, saying hmm, not bad, not bad at all, giant monolith of red and perfect white like a sundial pointing out the sky.

"Not bad," Eames says. "I'm rather impressed. Especially since you've no imagination at all."

Arthur spits a retort that he doesn't remember, and Cobb is saying somewhere in Mexico that you shouldn't use memories, never use memories, and Arthur thinks up an excuse about _not enough time_ and thinks nothing at all about his sister and the house which crumbled its way into soot, Arthur aged seven at the top of a lighthouse dreaming of boats and of monsters under the sea, seeing too late the bright orange dot on the hill-side, same place where his house's roof used to be.

Eames is the first ever to see this lighthouse and Arthur doesn't realise until it's over and done.

000

[after]

They move.

Arthur has bursts of this feeling, sitting upright on his hotel bed and fingers scrambling for the light, not that he's slept anyway, not that either of them have slept. Whenever it happens Arthur goes across the hall and Eames is there like he always is, that worn poker chip flipping through his fingers, suited shoulders gone silvery-grey by the moon.

"Again?" Eames says each time without fail, and Arthur doesn't need to say yes.

They move.

Hotel rooms seem to build themselves, tall glass and steel girders, wherever they go. Arthur thinks that this place is a labyrinth of places, equally anonymous and equally lost, like the walls of a maze that's been partially knocked down. Arthur thinks that there must be some centre to it, something there in the middle that they're meant to strive for, and Eames shrugs whenever Arthur brings it up and says darling, don't ask me, I don't have a clue.

So they move. Arthur doesn't know why it's important to move, to keep running, only knows that it happens, they _do_. In the distance the lighthouse is gleaming and white and they run in their own way, taking it slow.

000

[before]

Eames is simultaneously one of the best and one of the worst Arthur has ever worked with.

Eames is slanted eyes and carelessness, but careless without an ounce of effort and easy, like when everything falls into place it's just luck and not purpose, not hours of planning. They pick their way through the tangle of streets and Eames whistles, scuffs at the road with his feet.

Arthur can't tolerate carelessness.

They lose five hours on the trip to Bucharest and two and a half to locating their mark and when they finally go under Arthur wants to run, as if he can tread the seconds underneath his feet and leave them somewhere far behind. Eames says slow down, love, we've got twenty hours and you don't want to attract undue attention to yourself, do you?

Arthur glares at him, reloading his Glock in the side-street and says you're wearing that ridiculous shirt of yours and you're worried about attracting any _undue attention_.

"It's _your_ dream, dear, you dressed me, you know," Eames says and Arthur can't argue against that.

000

The first three hours are simple, Arthur and Eames in a hotel restaurant two streets away from the lighthouse, sun setting, the two of them waiting for nightfall.

Eames actually insists on eating and Arthur wonders why he bothers at all, nobody _needs_ to eat in dreams and Eames has orange flecks on the tips of his hair and a wine glass, expensive Bordeaux red, Arthur watching him out of the corner of his eye and wondering why he feels like he needs to.

"No need to stare, sweetheart. I'm not going anywhere."

"I don't trust you," Arthur says, third time.

"You'll need to trust me if you want this to work," and Eames makes a great show of unfolding his napkin. "Can't be fighting projections and each other at the same time, you know."

Arthur notes to himself how quick those fingers are. "I think I can be excused for fighting you."

"Up above? Certainly. But not down here, Arthur love."

It's true and Arthur is annoyed with himself because he knows this. Trust is integral down here, that time on the Weis job and the holding cell and the way Weis had put a gun down on the table within Arthur's reach, said anytime, it's yours, just tell me what I want to know and the awful crack of Arthur's arm breaking, left one, then right, then onto his legs. Cobb had come for him almost twelve hours later, swearing and saying that bitch, that bitch, I'm never letting you set yourself up as bait again, before mercifully shooting him twice in the head.

Eames hums when the duck confit finally comes and Arthur says, "You won't need to worry about me. I'm a professional."

"I never doubted that, dear."

It's condescending and Arthur wants very deeply to punch him but Arthur never does things like that. There are so many lines that Arthur won't cross.

"Good," he says instead, and Eames smiles at him like he knows, like Eames in his own way has always known.

000

[after]

"You know we can't keep doing this, love," Eames says.

It's morning and they're walking along a courtyard and a fountain is going in the centre of it. Arthur thinks of pigeons, in Spain perhaps, or France, and he's never seen a pigeon here.

"We're just walking," Arthur tells him. "We do this all the time."

"Darling, you know that's not what I'm talking about."

Arthur stops and Eames walks on a few steps before pausing as well. "You want to get out."

"Don't you, Arthur?"

"But there's nowhere for us to go," Arthur says, the spray of the fountain behind Eames' hair and Arthur thinks for a moment that he looks perfect like that. "There's something here and we have to find it, Eames."

Eames turns his head and says, "This place isn't right."

"It's the only place we have right now."

"That's not true," Eames says. "There's somewhere else. I can feel it, I just can't remember it too well."

"You've been dreaming, is all," Arthur tells him shortly and keeps walking, even though they never sleep anymore, something deep in his mind that says no less than a gunshot or a final plunge off the highest cliff and Arthur knows there's something wrong with this world, but at least it's better than no world at all.

000

**TBC**

000

**A/N: Erm, look. This fic has exploded on my computer and I think it's going to end up with more than 3 Parts; I might end up with 4 Parts and an Epilogue, or something. Or maybe just 5 full-length Parts. (If the latter, there will be smut involved, but I'm rather doubtful of my smut-writing skills.) Just bear with me while I do this, alright guys? I'm terrified of this fic out-living (or out-wording) its welcome. I'm hoping this doesn't happen, but you can never be sure.**

**Please don't forget to review, dears!**


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